Productive on the Home Front

We sure got a lot done on our project this weekend. Saturday morning, it was the living room carpet. Papa did the heavy lifting, he’s pretty good with a knife, and before I knew it half the carpet was up. The worst part was trying to figure out what to do with all the furniture. We have shoved it all over, and it was still always in the way. D2 caught a picture of Papa using a couple of methods to remove the carpet pad. The metal thing I use to scrape ice off the drive proved most useful.

The snow shovel in the background didn’t work as well. After the first half as scrapped up and bagged, we pulled staples, I vacuumed and we moved the furniture to the empty space. We did the second half, and felt quite happy.

We painted the window casings of the old windows, Papa on the left-handed side, me on the right-handed side. The windows look lots better.

I really would have pulled the carpet up much sooner if I had known what the floor under looked like. It is actually much better than the carpet was, but still pretty rough. It looks as if some previous owner finished it around an area rug which was placed in the middle.

Papa patched and painted two of the big walls in the room, and the outside wall up the stairway, leaving the one under the stairs and one connected with it. I painted the outside of the banister Sunday and Monday, and Monday night he painted the remaining two walls. We also squeezed in a trip to the Big Box Home Improvement store to get the trip for the bottom of the wall. We also ordered new blinds for the living room windows, and new covers for the cold air returns.

By the time we got the garbage out Monday night, we were ready for bed.

I’m working on the stairway now. It has taken a lot of patching and sanding, and the results aren’t as nice as I’d like, but it will be OK. It actually looks good when I remove my glasses.

It is supposed to be between sixty and seventy degrees this afternoon. Papa said I could paint the trim outside, pulling the saw horses out into the drive if it is that warm.  It is only 37 right now, so I’ll watch the temp and work on the stairs.

The worst part of this is the poor cats. The spend a lot of most days upstairs in D1’s room, or the one my grandsons used when they lived here. I locked them out, and they are pathetic and sad. The gray and white one goes to the top of the stairs and rattles the doors several times a day. Cats don’t like change, just don’t like it. It will be over soon; when the steps are done, I can let them back where they want to be. In the meantime, they are hiding under my bed a lot.